Will Rouhani Be Enough? 12 Questions For Vali Nasr

The surprise election of the moderate Hassan Rouhani as Iran's new president has brought thousands of Iranians into the streets for several nights running, chanting for everything from freedom to a new nuclear negotiator. With public expectations high that a Rouhani-led government will be able ease Iran out of its international isolation, policy-makers in Tehran are scrambling to chart their path forward. The West, for its part, will be watching for signs of an authentic shift in Iran's attitude toward diplomacy. Vali Nasr, a former State Department advisor and current dean of the John Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, examines the Obama Administration's struggles in dealing with Iran in his much-discussed book The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat. We turned to Nasr to explore what Iran's vote really means, how Rouhani will handle his thorny mandate, and what both sides will expect from one another in the weeks ahead.

Why did people vote for Hassan Rouhani en masse, what message where they sending?

It's very clear that the vote was a strong rejection of Ahmadinejad. Whether they disliked him personally or just thought that in order for Iran to break through its present log jam it needs a different leader, the outcome is still the same: they decided that Iran needs somebody else. There were remnants of the Green movement there as well, a residue of that you could see in this vote for change.

The critical thing in 2005 was that Ahmadinejad promised he could actually create a stable conservative majority in Iran, that was his value to Khamenei. In 2009 the rigging of the election disproved that point, that it didn't work out. So for the first time since there was a vote [we could look to] to see whether Iran is really to the right, or in the middle towards reform. What's interesting is that if Rouhani hadn't won in the first round it could have been argued that the Iranian population is to the right of center, and that if you put the conservative votes together they would form a majority. But fact that he won outright in the first round really did defeat that 2005 argument of Ahmadinejad, that Iran's center of gravity is really conservative.

Rouhani doesn't have final say over the nuclear program, but he was elected on a mandate to moderate Iran's nuclear diplomacy. How will he handle this tension going forward?

The majority of world leaders don't have the authority to change their country's foreign policy completely. This is also true of the United States. You can't come in and say I'm completely going to undo the Pentagon or shift some major foreign policy area. Ultimately there are policies seen as the heart of a country's global strategy that are not going to be changed on a dime, and there are many more constituencies involved than just the supreme leader, there's also public opinion. People voted to solve [the nuclear standoff], not to give in 100 percent to what America says. We can't be looking for the leader of another country to be elected to do our policies in that country. We're not going to get a government that says 'let's hand over the nuclear program.'

What Rouhani can bring is a new approach, attitude and style to negotiations that might actually make forward movement more likely. His promise was 'I can take this back to where it was in 2003,' to more constructive, fruitful engagement that could stop further sanctions and create an environment that could potentially move things forward. Because of the things that Ahmadinejad said, literally no Western leader wanted to even shake his hand or have his picture taken with him. That obstacle is now out of the way. At least the Europeans can begin meeting with Rouhani, and imagine what could come out of that. Style matters in politics, and we shouldn't forget that while Ahmadinejad caused all of these sanctions to be brought against Iran, the problem was his style not his substance. Ahmadinejad was actually more forward-leaning than others, he agreed to the Turkey-Brazil deal, the Geneva deal, and he was the only Iranian president to write letters to an American president. If you look at why the world was so successful in isolating Iran, you will have to say it had to do with his style.

Some Iranian analysts and intellectuals I talk to don't acknowledge that point, they think that America is intractably hostile to Iran because of Israel, and that Ahmadinejad's antics didn't make a difference.

Netanyahu's foreign policy was built on Ahmadinejad. [Netanyahu] portrayed Iran as an existential threat to Israel, and Ahmadinejad, by talking about wiping Israel off the map, made that kind of view credible. Ahmadinejad made the worst assumptions and interpretations about Iran quite credible. Already style has mattered enormously toward foreign policy, so style will matter here as well. The world's impression of a leader is important, and the impression here of Rouhani as a reformist does provide some some manoeuvring room around Iran. It doesn't mean the issue has gone away, but it makes it possible to put something else on the table and see if Congress and the American public can be brought along, because it's a fresh, more moderate face, and this creates more manoeuvring room.

Reformists in Iran seem realistic about what can be achieved immediately, but there is also an anxiety that things go well from the outset.  Who needs to make the first move?

There will be a lot of that [kind of talk], this often happens in diplomacy and both sides have to find ways to move together. This is the sort of time where you might end up with some creative diplomatic manoeuvring, where both sides look like they're moving at the same time. What this means is that Rouhani needs political cover from Washington to take a step, and Washington needs political cover from Iran to make a first step. It requires some ingenious tap dancing to create that political cover, because both sides know that they are very vulnerable at home, they don't want to be seen basically looking weak. Also both sides are very worried about being rebuffed, both have been there and know that if you go there you'll be criticized for having been naive.

I've heard some reformists saying that if the United States passes new sanctions in the early weeks of Rouhani's presidency, it will be the final death blow to Iran's moderates.  How do you see that possibility?

The U.S. Congress has its own agenda, it's not the government of the United States. The reality is that it's very hostile to the president and there are plenty of people in the U.S. Congress and those lobbying who would like to sabotage a deal. There are plenty of cases [we've seen] where the minute you begin to show success, somebody may take a step to undermine it. Yes, without a doubt there will be attempts to disregard the reformist victory with more sanctions. Nothing ultimately is going to move forward unless there is some kind of agreement at the table.

What will Rouhani be looking for, in terms of sanctions relief? Will the United States consider offering this?

Each side will try to ask for the most and offer the least, that will be everybody's starting positions. So surely Rouhani will ask for banking sanctions and the European oil embargo, and the Americans are going to ask for everything. That's where essence of negotiation is to actually get that far.

A startling 72 percent of Iranians turned out to vote in this election, throwing their popular will behind the chance for a negotiated solution to this stand-off with the West. Do you think this high turnout will cool the neo-con enthusiasm for threatening war against Iran?

No, the neo-cons are not in power and therefore at liberty to be as irresponsible as they want to be. Secondly, whenever you have a moderate president in Iran, the argument is that it doesn't matter and the focus is on the Supreme Leader. When you have Ahmadinejad, everyone focuses on him, as though the Iranian president can actually pull the trigger. There are those who don't believe in making a deal with this regime period. Some are Iranians, some Iranian-Americans, some are Americans. There are going to be people who will say we should disregard the election, and that Rouhani is not different from others and doesn't control things, it's actually the supreme leader.

But the reality is that Iran has a complicated power structure, it effectively has two presidents, one elected and one not, and the way the government runs is that you deal with the president with the supreme leader sitting in the background. But you still have to deal with the president, you are negotiating with the supreme leader through him. The value of Rouhani is that as the intermediary between you and the supreme leader he is a more pleasant face, and it’s easier to justify going through him. He’s somebody who wants to be helpful and may move the ball with his own boss. I’ve seen negotiations here where you have an American negotiator who is disinterested and incompetent versus a very skilled negotiator looking for even the smallest inch of opening. Everything the other side says can be interpreted in the best or worst of lights, even body language, so the interlocutor matters. We can treat the Iranian president as the in-between decision-maker.

You write in your book about Richard Holbrooke's belief that successful diplomacy in the region required having all the stakeholders involved, but you are also very frank about the costs and risks involved for President Obama in pursuing real diplomacy with Iran, particularly the role played by Congress. Do you think these realities are understood by Iran’s political establishment?

Iranians don't understand that some foreign policy issues are really domestic policy issues. Israel in America is a domestic policy issues because it matters to so many Americans. One of the greatest damages that Ahmadinejad did was to turn Iran into a domestic political issue. There is an attitude many Iranians have when talking about this, as though the Jewish-American community are outsiders. While the largest portion of the pro-Israeli community are evangelical Christians, which by some accounts could be half of the U.S. population. You also have the pro-Israel lobby that cares about Israel as if it were one of America’s own states. Ahmadinejad made sure that Iran would be a domestic issue, and that it be seen through the prism of his anti-Israel posture. The Holocaust rhetoric issue was especially quite damaging. The American president faces great difficulty in dealing with Iran, Iran has become very toxic and entangled in both domestic and security issues.

It’s often argued that sanctions against Iran aren’t working, but grimly enough, it’s still early days. How do you gauge their effectiveness so far?

Sanctions have inflicted a lot of pain on Iran, and there are some observers now arguing that this election is actually a result of sanctions. That they’ve convinced the Supreme Leader he needs a more friendly face and convinced the public that if they want to get away from sanctions they should elect a moderate. So sanctions can be said to have been effective, Iran is paying attention and sanctions have done their service. The question is now will the diplomats take over, so they can take advantage of sanction?

The perception in America is that President Obama has conducted a very different foreign policy than George W. Bush, but you argue that when it comes to Iran their approaches are  virtually indistinguishable. You write in your book about these policies ultimately turning Iran into a ‘failed state.’ Is this speculation about a theoretical danger, or do you see this as a real worry?

I think it’s fairly serious in the sense that sanctions create poverty, and by some estimates around 40 percent of Iranians now live below the poverty belt. This creates unemployment, erodes the capacity and authority of state institution. You may not see it at first in Tehran, but you’ll see it in Zahedan, in rural Kerman, more and more local authorities trying to create more economies to generate income.

When a government can't pay salaries, a black economy emerges based on crime, by in large, and these are not far-fetched [scenarios]. You can't have a very viable state based on a non- functioning economy --  just as you see in other parts of world where outside aid is poured on top of a shattered economy, like in Afghanistan. If you don't have an economy you don't have a state. We are seeing evidence already of serious worry, manufacturing is beginning to disappear, local institutions are beginning to suffer, these are serious concerns. I don't think we're close to war, but if there is no deal, there is going to be a cycle of sanctions pressure that will continue, while Iran is building more nuclear capability.

What will the West be looking for in the coming weeks out of Iran?

The world is going to look for a sign of something from Rouhani that shows he has authority. Some kind of appointment in Iran, some sign of independence. If he's able to sack [Saeed] Jalili and choose his own minister, that’s a way to show that he does actually have some authority or independence. That would be important. And the most important person is the chief nuclear negotiator rather than the foreign minister.

Does Rouhani’s election provide Europe with a chance to play a meaningful role again in the world’s dealings with Iran?

His election could give Britain political cover to reestablish relations. The Europeans are in a better position to respond more quickly, because of their political make up. In the game of symbols and symbolism the Europeans have a role to play, they could take certain actions that would give momentum to Rouhani at home. The British could try to reopen their embassy or basically provide more positive signals to Iran. That would help Rouhani and he could then reciprocate.